From what I've read, the PRL file might only have some battery life impact if you do a lot of roaming...it determines the preferred roaming channel...can't see how it would impact battery life for "normal" use. That being said, I too updated my PRL, and network settings, and have experienced improved battery life. Go figure

Well as for myself, after the 1.3.1 update, my battery life went to the crapper. I use to have 30-40% remaining life with moderate and thats with my bluetooth on (but not active) and wireless on (but not active).

Now since the update I can have everything off (but phone) and it will barely make it through a 10 hour day with little texting before I get the warning messages of low battery.

Ive even started to use the homebrew battery monitor program and I would see the "Drain per Hour %" range from 8-12% and sometimes higher if I was using txt or got email notifications (which I switched down to 15 mins).

I just completely the guidelines but I didnt drain the battery, but I will charge it overnight and then run the BatteryMonitor program and then I can compare the results that I have been seeing for the last 2-3 days vs now with the tweaks.

I hope it helps, cause 8-10 hours just aint enough to get me through the day. Without a working tweak, I would have to either get the improved battery or the extended battery. Of course the extended battery will not work with touchstone, so I hope this works.

OK, the Palm Pre is constantly connecting and searching for the best signal to connect to. Just how it works. It will look for sprint first and then for the next strongest signal it is ALLOWED to connect to. This is where the PRL comes into play and how it can affect battery life. The PRL is the "list" of roaming partners and towers it's allowed to connect to and is it's "authorization" to do so if it can not connect to sprint first.
If the PRL is out of date, the pre will drain the battery faster as it is searching for another tower to connect to if needed. An up to date PRL is the solution to a number of other issues as well and updating it can resolve things from data connectivity issues to service and coverage issues. Updating it is one of the first troubleshooting steps on any device here at sprint. It does affect more than you realize. If the Pre is always searching for a strong signal because it is not "authorized" to connect due to out of date PRL, it is using resources for that which can affect other apps running smoothly/quickly and can affect battery drain.

I have had dramatic improvements today by leaving wifi off. Generally since updating to 1.3.1 last week my battery was almost dead before I left work for the day. I'm almost done my workday and am at 82%.

I think the wifi was not shutting off at times when the screen was off.

Well as for myself, after the 1.3.1 update, my battery life went to the crapper. I use to have 30-40% remaining life with moderate and thats with my bluetooth on (but not active) and wireless on (but not active).

Now since the update I can have everything off (but phone) and it will barely make it through a 10 hour day with little texting before I get the warning messages of low battery.

Ive even started to use the homebrew battery monitor program and I would see the "Drain per Hour %" range from 8-12% and sometimes higher if I was using txt or got email notifications (which I switched down to 15 mins).

I just completely the guidelines but I didnt drain the battery, but I will charge it overnight and then run the BatteryMonitor program and then I can compare the results that I have been seeing for the last 2-3 days vs now with the tweaks.

I hope it helps, cause 8-10 hours just aint enough to get me through the day. Without a working tweak, I would have to either get the improved battery or the extended battery. Of course the extended battery will not work with touchstone, so I hope this works.

I wanted to quote and update this, with my results. Attached is a scan of my phone when I was done.

I charged up all night and keep it on the charger until I went to work. I did not place it on the charger until I came home and after I scanned the front.

My usage was light. Only 4 Email notification, 10 Web Page loads, 3 txt messages, and about 5 mins of using some of the soundboard programs (super trooper, South Park, etc). Also I keep the wireless and bluetooth completely off.

From the attachment you can see, that I have 41% remaining battery power after almost 9 hours. Drain per Hour was at 6.28 at time of scan, with remaining time of 6.53 hours. I had the program update every 1 min, for the best averages.

You can also see by the bar, the is was a slow decline through the whole day. No sharp down spikes.

So the advice from the OP seems to improve battery life GREATLY if you had issues from the 1.3.1 update. Before I tweaked my phone, it would be dead with the same amount of usage within 6-7 hours. Now I am at about Pre-1.3.1 battery usage.

I ran the interactive test and the results stated my battery was 89% charged however, the phone dislplayed 93%. I am guessing I should let in drain and recharge to correct this. If the test and phone match then maybe you don't need to drain your battery. Just a thought.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lazslo11
Check your PRL setting in Device Info, it should be 60657. Changing your Network setting to Sprint Only instead of Automatic helps with battery life. Both of these reset after 1.3.1 update. You can find these in Dial Pad-Preferences-Network/Network Settings.

A big thanks to this post that started the conversation about battery life and how to possibly fix the 1.3.1 bug that hit some Pre's. It works. I reset my PRL to 60657 and let my battery drain to 0%. When the phone was fully charged thereafter, my battery performance is back to normal or even improved somewhat.

To see what your PRL is at, go to "device info" and click "more info" at the bottom. On the next page, scroll down and see what number your PRL has. Mine WAS 60654 but needed to be 60657. In order to reset your phones PRL, open your phone dial pad and click on the Sprint dropdown (top left). Click Preferences and scroll down to Preferred Roaming List. Click "Update PRL". While I was there I also clicked "Update Network Settings". Once it's finished I did a phone reset (Orange key + SYM + R). When the phone comes back up, go back to "device info", click "more info" and check the PRL #. It should have reset to 60657. If it didn't reset, somebdoy suggested calling Sprint to reset your PRL.

At this point I drained my phone battery to nothing and recharged. It's been working 100 times better in all ways since updating the PRL. Battery is back to solid performance, pages move quicker and snappier. 1.3.1 works so much better now that I found the solution. SOOOO HAPPY AGAIN!!! Thanks for the advice. Hope it works for you too!

For some reason, when I tap "sprint" in the top left corner, nothing happens. Any ideas?

OK, the Palm Pre is constantly connecting and searching for the best signal to connect to. Just how it works. It will look for sprint first and then for the next strongest signal it is ALLOWED to connect to. This is where the PRL comes into play and how it can affect battery life. The PRL is the "list" of roaming partners and towers it's allowed to connect to and is it's "authorization" to do so if it can not connect to sprint first.
If the PRL is out of date, the pre will drain the battery faster as it is searching for another tower to connect to if needed. An up to date PRL is the solution to a number of other issues as well and updating it can resolve things from data connectivity issues to service and coverage issues. Updating it is one of the first troubleshooting steps on any device here at sprint. It does affect more than you realize. If the Pre is always searching for a strong signal because it is not "authorized" to connect due to out of date PRL, it is using resources for that which can affect other apps running smoothly/quickly and can affect battery drain.

It's a list of roaming partners, NOT a list of towers. This entire conversation of an updated PRL impacting battery life presumes 2 things:
First, that you are spending a LARGE portion of your day roaming. Second, while roaming you just so happen to be in an area with 2 available non-sprint networks, one with a strong signal and one with a weak signal. The phone was previously attempting to use the weaker signal (because the PRL told it to), and now with the new PRL it just so happens that the stronger of the 2 networks in your location got re-prioritized to be above the weaker network.

The odds of this impacting a lot of people is so remote it's hard to imagine. And for the fraction of people who might actually have a positive impact because of a PRL change, you would think that there would be an equal number of people with a negative impact. (same scenario I described above, but in reverse)

Sprint doesn't tweak the PRL list based on anyone's coverage - it's all about them re-negotiating roaming deals. If they can get a better deal from Verizon in northern Wisconsin, for example, then the next PRL update will set Verizon in northern Wisconsin at a higher priority.

I posted this in a thread in the gsm section but I thought it worth posting in here. I was getting 6% + per hour battery drain on standby since 1.3.1. I uninstalled all of my patches today and my battery usage dropped to 0.8% on standby. I dont know which patch it was, I had 17 installed, none of which were dangerous ones.